Development of a new wind‐rose for the British Isles using radiosonde data, and application to an atmospheric transport model

Abstract

SUMMARYA six-hourly dataset of radiosonde ascents spanning a ten-year period from four stations in the British Isles has been used to generate a set of wind frequency roses and wind speed roses for the pressure level range 950-900 hPa. The wind frequency rose showed close agreement with the long-term series of the Jenkinson classification scheme. Small but significant inter-station and interannual variations were observed. Seasonal analysis of the data revealed the higher incidence of north-easterlies during spring months whilst the stronger wind speeds associated with the winter months were also evident. The use of a harmonic mean was found to be appropriate for calculating a directionally dependent wind speed for use in an atmospheric transport model. A harmonic mean wind speed value of 7.5 m s −1 was generated from the entire dataset, the same as that which has previously been used in other transport models. This is also the same value as the 'optimized wind speed' that was generated by Singles et al. The radiosonde wind frequency rose and wind speed rose were input to the FRAME atmospheric transport model. This resulted in an improved correlation with measurements of SO 2 concentrations from a national monitoring network when compared to a model simulation using the earlier dataset of Jones.

Determination of the Jenkinson and Collison’s weather types for the western Mediterranean basin over the 1948-2009 period. Temporal analysis

“…Although type W is the fourth most frequent in the western Mediterranean, its frequency is low (3.4%), contrasting very much with its presence in the British Isles (Lamb, 1972;Dore et al, 2006). This result is consistent with the marginality of the Mediterranean basin in relation to the westerlies.…”

A Statistical Analysis of Wind Speed and Power Density Based on Weibull and Rayleigh Models of Jumla, Nepal

“…To another user, yet for same purpose, a 16-point rose is absolutely necessary [31]. Mainly two types of wind rose: wind frequency rose and wind speed rose can be drawn [32]. Unavailability of data on wind direction in stations of DHM barred us from plotting wind rose and thus is not presented in this article.…”

A climatology of mid-tropospheric mesoscale strong wind events as observed by the MST radar, Aberystwyth

“…Following the approach of Dore et al (2006) standard radiosonde data held at the BADC (UK Meteorological Office, 2006) for the Stornoway, Camborne, Hemsby and Valentia stations (representing the northern, southern, eastern and western extremes of the British Isles respectively) were analysed. The present work extends the study of Dore et al (2006) to include the free troposphere as well as the boundary layer, adding an extra year's data and including also data from Aberporth to give a direct comparison with the MST radar (Aberporth is located ∼50 km southwest of the MST radar). Station details are given in Table IV.…”